Dawgs fall in season opener

Wednesday

Dec 5, 2012 at 12:10 AMDec 5, 2012 at 12:28 AM

Ionia unable to keep up in offensive battle with Thornapple-Kellogg

By ANDREW ROBERTSandrew.roberts@sentinel-standard.com

The Ionia boys basketball team had a strong offensive showing in its first game under new head coach Mike DeLap Tuesday night, but foul trouble and defensive miscues hurt the Bulldogs as they fell to Thornapple-Kellogg by a score of 72-59.

"We knew coming in we were going to be rebuilding the program, with six of our top players graduated from last year," DeLap said. "Rebuilding is never easy and we are taking it one step at a time.

We scored 30 more points than (T-K) this year and that means our offense is being rebuilt. Now we have to work on rebuilding our defense.

"We beat them in the first quarter, then tied them in the third quarter. The foul trouble early took us out of our chemistry."

The Bulldogs started the game strong, scoring the first two baskets of the game on makes by senior Austin Wolcott, then battled through the quarter to take a 13-12 advantage. The Trojans held a one-point lead late in the second, then finished the quarter on a 6-0 run to take a seven-point advantage into the break.

Ionia kept pace throughout the third and the first few minutes of the fourth before T-K was able to put together another run to pull away.

Wolcott finished the night with a team-high 14 points. Sophomore Brendan Bledsoe hit five three-point baskets in his varsity debut to finish with 15 points.

Sophomore forward Bryce Cashner scored 11 in his first varsity game, while Austin Gregory finished with nine points.DeLap took over the Bulldog program back in July, after the summer league season. He said that has given him very limited time to work with the team, so he expects to see a great deal of improvement over this first month of the 2012-13 schedule.

"We are under the gun. I didn't get this team until July, so I have had only about three weeks with them, so gives us two or three more weeks and hopefully we will turn some heads."

Ionia (0-1) will travel to DeWitt on Friday to open Capital Area Activities Red play against the Panthers.